Amazon boss Jeff Bezos and his deep-sea salvage crew have successfully raised enough wreckage from the seabed off Florida to rebuild two of the massive F-1 rocket engines that once powered NASA's Apollo missions.
F-1 rocket from an Apollo engine A fixer-upper in mechanical terms
"We found so much," Bezos said in a blog post …

Re: Look...

Re: Look...

If they bring up interesting bits of history from the sea bed, or create their own launch system at vastly cheaper cost than existing systems, or indeed do anything that spends their money rather than hording it, they can do all the ego projects they like.

Technical Matter

"Although the rockets are still technically the property of NASA the salvage attempt has been a privately-funded operation sponsored by Bezos and his chums."

Has he spoken to and more importantly reached any sort of agreement with NASA about this, uh, really trivial and purely technical matter - i.e. who owns them and/or who is going to decide on the engines disposition?

Re: Technical Matter

Re: Technical Matter

Indeed NASA are aware and in support of the matter.

In Jeff's Bezos blog on the matter (already linked in this conversation) he states the following:

"

Finally, I want to thank NASA. They extended every courtesy and every helping hand – all of NASA’s interactions were characterized by plain old common sense, something which we all know is impressive and uncommon. We're excited to be bringing a couple of your F-1s home.

"

While not an outright declaration of their blessing, it is obviously strongly inferred.

Re: Technical Matter / "Salvage"

You can be sure that U.S. only allows one of their own, trusted plutocrats to get his fingers on one of the most powerful rocket motors. These things still have massive military and political value and I would not be surprised to learn that parts of it are still classified secrets. You can build a nice ICBM with one of these. Not everybody really needs sold-fuel ICBMs when getting into that activity.

All your law technicalities mean exactly nothing when it comes to strategic weapons and surely they will find a way to route you to Gitmo if you try to grab one without their (written or not) permission.

Re: Technical Matter

"Has he spoken to and more importantly reached any sort of agreement with NASA about this" -- I assume you missed the part of the article that said "Bezos is now steaming for Cape Canaveral to drop off the precious rockets for rebuilding and eventual display."

Re: I don't suppose

Re: I don't suppose

Given a choice of drowning in the freezing four-foot waves we had in the channel that day, or drowning in Florida where maybe he could pick up a Mojito or two before he went, I know which I'd choose. It was bad enough in a boat!

Bet I know where they will be going....

I bet I know where NASA will send them for restoration - the same place Liberty Bell went, the same place the various V1 and V2 rockets go. I hope they do it like they did Liberty Bell, and do the restoration out in public.

Re: Ahem, numbers...

Re: Ahem, numbers...

"Sorry, I was born days after Apollo 11 and I'm not that close to 50"

Come on, don't kid yourself about how the years have flown, mate! I was a toddler when Armstrong mentioned steps and leaps, and I turn 47 this year. If you were born then, that means you turn 44 this year. So there's 44 years behind you and 6 years until you're 50, so you're 88% of the way there bud...

Here, have a pint on me and let's reminisce about the good old days like the old farts we are! ;)

I remember thinking when Dad dug me out of bed to watch the historic moment (it's my earliest childhood memory), as a child would, that the "funny man" bouncing around on TV in the big suit was talking about the fun of jumping down stairs. I had only recently started walking (or toddling I should say) and had just discovered how to jump. Armstrong said small step and giant leap, so I assumed he meant that it was OK to jump off of the bottom steps of the hall staircase - an enjoyable pursuit I had just discovered and from which Mum quickly did her best to dissuade me, in absolute terror of me breaking my silly little neck doing it!

Of course, given my very tender age at the the time, the significance of the "funny man" actually being on the moon was completely lost on me...

Re: Ahem, numbers...

" Each of the five engines fired for just 165 seconds"

I think you'll find it was 155 seconds (2 minutes, 35 seconds). As schoolboys in that era we memorised such figures by heart. The first stage engines had a combined thrust of 7500000 lbs and burned propellant at 1000 tons/minute (no metrication in those days), meaning that the first stage got through more than 2500 tons of fuel before separating.

Re: " Each of the five engines fired for just 165 seconds"

Just to be awkward... from a number of sources the burn time varied between 150 and 165 seconds, so you're both right: "it started out at 150 seconds, and the first two Mercury flights were 150 seconds, but they were unmanned. They had the whole stack, but they didn’t have the astronauts. They made flight changes for the first manned one, and from that point on, the burn duration was 165". From http://history.nasa.gov/monograph45.pdf, definitely worth a read.

Just one statistical snippet: "We got over 280,000 seconds of total burn time throughout the entire program. There were twelve Apollo flights that used the F-1 engines, then the Skylab used the last one that flew. That added up to thirteen flights or sixty-five total engines in flight. "

News flash!! The engines have mysteriously disappeared on the way to Cape Canaveral!!!

In other news, Jeff Bezos' Amazon purchase history has been hacked, and it was found that lately he has been stocking up on neutral-colored Nehru jackets and a white persian cat with a diamond collar.....